A Robotic barista is on show in Japan

Have you ever been into a branded coffee shop or retail store and felt that you were getting robotic service from the staff members?

That could quite literally become the norm if the mechanical future on show at the Japan Robot Week becomes a dystopian reality.

Visitors to a pop-up café at the Kawada Industries stand were treated to a cup of coffee, served to them be a robot barista called Nextage.

Robots like Nextage already perform a number of tasks in the engineering sector and have shown their worth in manufacturing plants across the world, but Kawada, a Tokyo-based robot maker, are aiming to show that their products can be useful in everyday environments. After all, what is more integral than a coffee shop to today’s generation?

Attendees use a tablet to choose their drink of choice and how they would like to customise it. Once the order was confirmed by the user, the barista did the rest: picking up the coffee, placing it into a coffee machine and then selection the additional items such as milk and sugar.

According to Kawada the robot is able to recognise objects in its vicinity and does so using a complex network of cameras which relay so called ‘location information’ to a central hub.

Videos on a Japanese YouTube channel the robot expertly making a number of cups of coffee, though humans had to intervene on a few occasions to make some minor adjustments to its positioning.

For now though, Nextage and other similar robots are only used for demonstration purposes and aren’t readily available to purchase – something which we think is a good thing.

We’re not sure we’re ready for a world where baristas, even the most subservient ones, don’t exist.

A video of Nextage in action can be viewed here.